


And Lips the Colour of Sin

by Muccamukk



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, Bad Jokes About Fairies, Crossdressing, M/M, New Jersey, Period-Typical Crossdressing, Period-Typical Language, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-War, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 06:07:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20077393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Dick visits Princeton late one night, only to find a different Nix than he expects.





	And Lips the Colour of Sin

**Author's Note:**

> Period typical everything, but mostly around language for gay men. This is set post-war, and not when the boys are at their best.
> 
> [Here's a video of Bea Lillie singing "There Are Fairies at the Bottom of My Garden,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVo3dphCtJE) which you may need later.
> 
> Huge thank you to ThrillingDetectiveTales for beta reading and cheerleading. You're the best <3

Dick didn't know why he kept coming when Nix called. He'd been in New Jersey for three months, and he was already weary of the endless parties at Nix's Princeton townhouse. Any hope that the arrival of Nix's little sister would settle things down had been dashed the moment Dick had picked Blanche up at the station. One was as bad as the other, and together they were worse.

Nix hadn't called since then, granting Dick no chance to employ any of his rehearsed excuses of fatigue and school. Then, when Nix had called, Dick'd dropped everything and driven over from New Brunswick, and hadn't bothered knocking on the way in.

It was just past nine on a Friday night, but no party was in so much as half swing. Other than one upstairs light, no one seemed to be home at all.

"Nix?" Dick called from a lounge scattered with liquor glasses but empty of either Lewis or Blanche Nixon.

"Up here!"

Dick followed Nix's voice up the twisting staircase to the second-story bedrooms, all the way trying to analyse how sober it'd sounded. The door to the guest bedroom was ajar, and Dick crossed the spear of light shining from it to put his hand on the door.

"Nix?" he said in a lower voice, the tension of anticipation building. When was the last time they'd actually been alone together? That night at the Yale Club? But was Nix alone, or would Blanche be there?

When Nix didn't answer, Dick pushed open the door.

For a moment, Dick thought he'd walked in on Blanche. A figure sat at the dressing table, back to the door, dressed in a magenta blouse and heavy charcoal skirt and matching lace hat. Dick's mind tried to fit the figure to Blanche's curvaceous body but couldn't. His eyes met Nix's in the mirror, and his perception reeled and shifted.

Nix turned, offering a three-quarter profile over the back of the chair like an old Dutch portrait. His hands were Nix's, and his shoulders strained against the blouse, but his face...

Dick sucked in a breath and lifted his hand to the door jamb to support himself. He felt as though the floor had shifted like the deck of a ship. Blood pounded in his ears, and for a moment his hearing faded as though a shell had landed too near. Dick tried to swallow, couldn't, and held Nix's dark eyes, finding familiarity in a face overwritten.

Nix had shaved clean, then painted and powdered his face until his skin was smooth, not only blushing his cheeks but sculpting them, and doing something complicated and dramatic with paint around his eyes. His lips were as red as sin.

Dicks's own lips were dry, but he couldn't lick them, not while Nix looked like that. The little square hat with its frills of lace made it look like he had long hair swept up under it, and the silk scarf around his neck hid his Adam's apple. Lewis Nixon would do any USO queen proud.

"What are you doing?" Dick asked, and he knew his voice was too harsh.

"Oh, just fooling around," Nix answered, but Dick had heard him lie to his officers enough times to know he didn't mean it. Worse, he sounded nearer to sober than Dick had seen him in a month. "Game lil' sis and I used to play."

It didn't look like a game to Dick. "Blanche here?"

Nix shook his head minutely. "At a party. In my best suit. She'll be gone all night."

"Why'd you call me, Lew?" Dick asked when Nix let the silence play out.

"Thought you might want to play too," Nix told him. His shoulders hunched. His knuckles were white where he held the arm of the chair, and he kept crossing and uncrossing his ankles. He was wearing stockings, the silk kind with seams up the backs, but his feet were bare.

The image of Nix in heels the same colour as his shirt, and how that would make his legs look, flashed through Dick's mind, and Dick made himself look back at Nix's face. It didn't help. It was like looking at a photograph that'd been double exposed and trying to puzzle which parts of the image belonged to what picture. Was this Nix the man Dick had loved all these years? Or was that the drunken failure of a man who never showed up for the job he'd dragged Dick into? And what had happened to the soldier? That Nix had been beautiful, too, if in a different and more terrible way.

He was beautiful now. Dick stepped forward, not knowing what he was doing but unable to keep from being drawn in. He lifted his hand to cup Nix's face like he had all those times, wanting touch to bind them together.

Nix turned his face away at the last second, shrugging so that Dick's hand connected with his neck between his scarf and the collar of his blouse. It was done up to his throat, and under it his chest was flat.

Dick wanted to know what would happen if he pressed his hands to Nix's chest and squeezed like he had breasts, so he did. The crisp cotton slid over Nix's chest hair and over solid flesh beneath it. Nix had put on weight since they'd left Austria, and his body had more give. Dick squeezed harder, watching Nix's face as he did—watching the way his lips parted and his eyes darkened until they were almost black. Dick could feel Nix's heart pounding against his palm and his own heart began to race in response. His cock pressed against the inside of his pants.

"Well, what kind of game?" It seemed like Dick only had questions that night. "You want me to treat you like a girl?"

Nix said nothing, but Dick could read a negation in the tightening of his jaw.

"Want me to call you pretty?"

Nix's eyes widened slightly, and Dick could work out the rules from there. He bent and kissed Nix on the lips—painted fuller than they were with some trick Dick couldn't work out. Dick turned his head carefully so he didn't smudge the face paint. The taste of the lipstick was unfamiliar, but the hint of whiskey and cigarettes under it put Dick back on familiar ground. He squeezed Nix's chest and thrust his tongue between Nix's teeth. Nix's tongue gave against his, and Dick turned the kiss into an act of holding open mouths together while Nix moaned under him. He had to widen his stance to keep from toppling over onto Nix.

Finally, Dick dropped to his knees in front of the chair. They were both gasping, and perspiration was making Nix's make up run. His mouth was an explosion smeared in red.

Not knowing what to say, Dick knelt there panting and staring up at Nix. The skirt fell over his knees and ended mid calf. Nix had shaved his legs.

"So am I?" Nix asked. He reached down and ran his thumb over Dick's lips. It came away smeared with lipstick.

Dick was glad he couldn't see the mirror from down here, but the reflection he saw in Nix's eyes said enough. "Are you what?"

"Pretty?" Nix asked and grinned. He had lipstick all over his teeth too, like a punch to the mouth.

"Just like Ava Gardner," Dick told him.

This smile was more like the cocky S.O.B. Dick actually knew. "I overshot there. I was aiming more for Bea Lillie."

The name belonged to a comedienne especially popular with the kind of men who liked to swish around the pansy bars dressed like Nix was now. Nix's knowing it didn't have to mean any more than Dick knowing the same. Lillie had spent the war in the USO. But what if it did mean more?

Dick found he had to clear his throat. "What, are there, uh... are there fairies at the bottom of your garden?"

Nix snorted and pushed his thumb back on Dick's lips to silence him. "I don't know, Dick. That the kind of question a lady should answer?"

A better man wouldn't have felt jealously hot in his chest at the idea of his sometime fellow out on the town looking like this. It would have been before Dick knew him, anyway, maybe in his college days. It didn't matter. This part of Nix had been Dick's for years now, even if most of the rest of Nix belonged to other women or to a bottle.

Dick both wanted to see more, and didn't want to hear it. He slid his hand up Nix's ankle—so damn smooth under the silk—and said, "How about I take a look up there and check?"

Instead of answering, Nix let his legs fall open. Dick's hands had gotten soft in the months at home. They slid up over the stockings without catching. He curled his fingers around Nix's calf muscles, kneading them until Nix whimpered with pleasure. The heavy skirt pushed up when Dick got to Nix's knees. His thighs were shaved too, little red stubble showing in places where the razor had grown blunt. The garters disappeared under the bunched fabric.

Nix's cock was already tenting up the skirt, and Dick could feel his thighs flexing under his touch. Nix shifted forward on the chair spreading his legs wider for Dick.

Dick told himself was ready to find lace or silk panties, but Nix wasn't wearing any underwear. He hadn't shaved his privates either. The dark hair and engorged cock against the charcoal skirt and white lace of the garter belt ought to have shocked Dick with the contrast. It didn't; he just wanted more. Blood pounding in his ears, Dick pushed his hands up Nix's thighs until he got to the tops of the stockings then traced the pads of his thumbs along the hems—moving from silk to skin and back again. Neither felt quite real.

"All clear down here," Dick commented, and glanced up for a reaction, but Nix had his eyes closed and his face turned away. Like what Dick was doing was too obscene to watch. "Well, I'll keep looking then," Dick said.

He pushed Nix's thighs further apart and pressed his face against the soft place behind Nix's balls. When he licked it hard, he heard Nix gasp. Dick could feel Nix's balls soft against his cheek and his hard cock above his ear every time he moved. Dick tried not to think about how badly he wanted to come then and there. He tried to tell himself that seeing Nix like this didn't turn his crank in a way that he hadn't imagined was possible. Dick focused on circling his tongue across soft skin. His fingers dug into Nix's thighs as he held his legs apart but he couldn't seem to control that. It wasn't even that Nix was trying to close them.

Dick ran his tongue back until he found Nix's asshole. He got another hissed profanity when his tongue touched it, and then Nix's hands were on his shoulders, holding him there. Dick pressed his whole face between Nix's legs, not able to breathe, but not caring either. Nix had prepared himself already, and the taste of Vaseline was more familiar than that of lipstick.

Had Nix played with himself in the bath while he'd been shaving his legs? Had he come already with his fingers up his own ass? He was certainly loose enough. Dick pushed his tongue in and out in little thrusts, mimicking the imagined pace. Nix's fingers tightened and relaxed in time. Dick's heart pounded too fast to let him hold his breath for long, but he couldn't quit, not with how Nix was starting to twitch and writhe under him. He could come with just Dick's tongue up his ass. Though not just that, his cock was rubbing though Dick's hair as Nix tried to thrust against Dick's mouth.

Saliva mixed with Vaseline and Dick kept making slick slurping sounds as he worked Nix's ass. He knew his stubble must be burning Nix's thighs and didn't care. Dick's hips kept jerking forward as he thrust against nothing but his shorts, not quite managing to move in time with Nix.

Finally, Dick had to breathe. He pulled away, getting half tangled in the skirt he didn't realise had fallen over his head. When he wiped his mouth, the back of his hand came away red with lipstick.

Nix was looking at him now. He was gasping through his mouth like he always did right before he came. If Dick touched him again, it'd be over for Nix.

Dick squeezed Nix's thighs and leaned back.

"For Christ's sake, Dick," Nix muttered. "Give a guy a hand."

"A lady, you mean?" Dick asked.

Nix snorted and reached for his cock, but Dick batted his hands away. Nix wrinkled his nose at Dick, and Dick smiled lopsidedly in return.

"Hang on," Dick said. "I promise you, you're gonna like this."

That, at least, got Nix's interest. He raised an eyebrow—which was somehow less of an eyebrow than when Dick had seen it a few days before, but hadn't been plucked either. Whatever game this was, Nix had been playing it for a while. He looked too perfect for this to be a whim of the moment.

Dick got to his feet and stripped as quickly as he could. They'd done this too many times for Dick to blush in front of Nix, but he could still feel the heat of his gaze. When Dick slid his shorts off, showing off how hard he was, Nix leaned back in his chair slightly and rolled his hips. It was an invitation in the shorthand they'd invented.

"Hey, you guessed it," Dick said. He leaned down and took both of Nix's hands—solid and warm with hair on the backs—and pulled him to his feet.

"I'm not just a pretty face," Nix replied. He hopped up onto the edge of the dressing table, which creaked under his weight but held.

"Though you are a _very_ pretty face," Dick said and stepped in between Nix's spread legs. His skirt had fallen down again, covering him to the knees. There was no way that a flush could show through layers of powder, but Dick saw Nix swallow and his breathing shallowed. Dick buried his hand in Nix's hair and tightened his fingers to pull a bit as he tipped Nix's head back. He kissed Nix deeply before asking, "So how many fellows have seen you looking this gorgeous?"

Nix braced his hands and leaned back, shoulders not quite touching the mirror behind him. He angled his head up with a smug jerk of his chin. "All these years, and I finally found out what makes Dick Winters jealous," he said. "I should've joined the USO after all."

Anger curled in Dick's stomach and made his cock harder. Hadn't he done enough to make it clear that he wanted Nix and only Nix? But here Nix was still pulling his pigtails, still wanting him to prove himself. "Guess I thought you knew that," Dick snapped.

He lifted Nix's skirt and stepped in. There was a tin of slick on the dresser, so he covered himself but didn't bother to prepare Nix any more. The head of his cock caught, and Nix grimaced, but then Dick was inside, and it felt a sweet as it always did, like Nix's body was was made to take him and only him.

Nix curled his stockinged feet around Dick's thighs, the silk sliding over tensed muscles, smoother than oil. When Nix let his head fall back, he clunked it on the mirror and winced, then laughed. He always laughed, no matter how roughly Dick took him. No matter how wild they got, Nix clung to Dick like a Coney Island ride. Maybe that's what Dick was to him, just the kind that took place under the bleachers rather than above the boardwalks.

Dick rocked his hips to push himself further in. Nix had prepared himself and Dick's tongue had done the rest. It was an easy slide, but Dick took his time anyway, wanting to make this last for himself, and to drag it out for Nix. The poplin cotton of the skirt bunched up between them, covering Nix's cock. When Dick was completely inside Nix, he glanced down between them, then up at Nix's face.

"Still want that hand?" he asked.

"Nah, I'm doing all right." Perspiration was beading up under the powder, but the distortion of Nix-but-not-Nix held. Dick kept looking at him, kept seeing something other than he expected but still something that he wanted.

He avoided his own reflection in the mirror behind Nix. Dick could feel the heat in his face and the sweat dampening his hair and knew what kind of mess he looked like. He focused on Nix and started to rock his hips. The even slide in and out as he kept his thrusts measured was familiar, almost comforting, but not in a way that could ever feel stale or routine. He took Nix's hips to hold them closer and left a palm print of Vaseline on the skirt.

Nix kept his hands braced behind him instead of holding onto Dick. He rolled his head back against the mirror until the hat came unclipped and slipped forward so the lace covered his eyes. He did look like Ava Gardner, in one of her lethal and mysterious roles. She would lead the hero down a dark path and die to redeem herself. Or the hero would die for her.

Unable to look at Nix, Dick leaned in and kissed him. He'd always thought he could kiss him for hours without a break, if only he'd had the hours. Nix's mouth was as sweet and welcoming as the rest of his body. He opened for Dick to deepen the kiss, and his arms came up to loop around Dick's neck, and Dick was entangled again, too tight to move. The buttons of Nix's blouse dug into Dick's chest as he held their bodies together. The thin layer of cotton separated them, and Dick wanted to take it off but didn't have a hand free.

Dick rocked their bodies back and forth, sliding his cock in and out as the angle changed. He couldn't draw out with Nix's legs so tightly wrapped around him. The slide of silk up and down his thighs and the scratch of lace on his stomach wouldn't let Dick forget what this was—even if he didn't really understand it.

Nix's nails scraped up and down Dick's back and neck. He sounded like he was trying to say something but it was lost in the kiss, and Dick could only hear the sound of their heavy breathing and the squeak of the dresser.

Dick was still kissing Nix when Nix gasped into his mouth and froze. Neither of them had touched his cock. He'd come from the friction of their bodies together, shooting into the folds of the skirt. His fingernails dug into the back of Dick's neck. The hand that had been sliding through Dick's hair tightened and pulled hard enough to make Dick's eyes water. Nix moaned into Dick's mouth, inarticulate and verbose at the same time.

The moans turned to high whimpers as Dick kept rocking them together. Every nerve in Dick's body sparked with lust. He wanted more, to feel so close they could never be two people again. He rocked faster, ignoring how Nix's heels were bruising the backs of his thighs. The kiss let Nix's small noises flow through his body and set the pace to faster, faster, faster.

Nix's body was pliant in his arms, hanging on but moving only in response to Dick. He would be sensitive after having come, but didn't complain as Dick followed his own pleasure. Trying to get a reaction, Dick bit Nix's lip, and Nix pulled away and buried his face against Dick's shoulder. The hat fell to the floor, leaving Nix's hair a mess of sweat-soaked curls. The pink cotton of his shirt stuck to Nix's skin, revealing the shape of his body as much as nakedness would.

Dick kissed his hair, tasting perspiration, pomade and a trace of the powder, familiar and strange all at once. He couldn't hold back any longer. Dick tightened his hold on Nix's hips and shoved them both against the dresser until the heart-stopping pleasure overwhelmed him. His body snapped tight as he came, and Nix held onto him through the release.

"Damn, Lew," he whispered into Nix's hair.

For some reason, that made Nix laugh softly against Dick's shoulder.

Dick thought Nix would push him off, wanting to put himself back into order for whatever his next game was. Instead, he kept his body wrapped around Dick's, holding them both upright against the dresser. His breath panted against Dick's neck in wet puffs, and neither of them said anything. Dick let go of Nix's hips so that he could wrap his arms around the small of his back and pull them tight. His cock was still deep inside Nix, now uncomfortable from the pressure, but if Nix didn't want to move, Dick sure as hell wasn't going to.

He waited, holding Nix close, until his heart slowed and his breathing came easy.

"A lot," Nix said suddenly.

"Mmm?" Dick didn't want to start this fight, so he pretended he didn't know what question Nix was answering.

"A lot of other fellows have seen me like this," Nix persisted.

"I figured," Dick said. The war had been the only time Nix would be his and his alone. It shouldn't matter. It wasn't like Nix had ever been the kind to stick to just one person, and Dick had known that going in. They'd been cheating on Nix's wife the first time they'd hooked up, and it wasn't too long before Nix had found that girl in Aldbourne either. Dick almost said that he didn't want to do this any more, but he knew that would be a lie. If Nix called, Dick would come, in both senses of the word.

"It doesn't matter when I'm with you," Nix said. He sounded almost apologetic.

Dick sighed. "Yeah. I figured that out too." The problem had never been that it wasn't good when they were together, just the two of them. Dick cupped the side of Nix's face and lifted his head so that he could look at him.

The foundation was half smeared off against Dick's skin and the dark lines around Nix's eyes had run; only traces of the lipstick remained, and none on his mouth. Nix was still beautiful.

"You know you didn't have to do all this just to get my attention," Dick said. "Or were you trying to scare me off?"

Nix's lips pulled back in a grimace. "You know not everything I do is because of you, don't you, Dick?"

"You keep telling me," Dick agreed. He stepped back, pulling out of Nix. He figured the skirt was done anyway and used the edge of it to wipe himself off. "Someday I'll believe you."

"No you won't." Nix smiled for real now, the eye make-up deepening the crinkles around his eyes. "You're a selfish son of a bitch who thinks everything is about you. Or should be. Then you get mad as hell when it isn't."

The words stung, but it wasn't the first time Nix had said them, and maybe they weren't wrong, at least when it came to Dick's affairs of the heart. "Don't see how that's wrong, when you keep saying you want me around," Dick told him.

Nix slid off the dresser, his soiled skirt falling back into place around him. The illusion had vanished with the make up, or maybe with the sex, and how he just looked like plain old Nix in his sister's skirt and blouse. To underline the point, he flipped open the cigarette case on the desk and drew one out. They were standing almost chest to chest, but Dick didn't pull back. If Nix smoking in his face could've put Dick off, it would have some time ago. "I keep saying that, do I?" Nix asked when he'd taken a drag.

"Sure you do," Dick told him.

"Well," Nix said after another drag, voice thick with the smoke, "if that's what a brainy girl like me says, I guess there must be something to it."

Another sideways acknowledgement, like _I thought maybe I'd drag you along with me_. Funny how Dick was always willing to be dragged. Funny how nothing else in his life felt as good as being dragged somewhere by Lewis Nixon.

"You should call me more often," Dick said.

"Maybe I should," Nix agreed. He kissed Dick, filling his mouth with smoke. Their lips were the only parts of their bodies that touched.

Dick inhaled Nix's breath, coughed, and stepped back.

Looking Nix's bedraggled finery up and down, he said, "I hope your sister didn't like that rig too much."

Nix grinned and struck a pin-up pose: one hand on his cocked hip, the other cupping the back of his head. It would have worked better with the hat. "Don't think she'd have let me wear it if she did."

Dick felt his face curling up into a smile, and he held out his hand. "Come on, Nix, let's go check out that bathtub of yours."

Nix let himself be pulled out of the room. "What, you think there's fairies in it?"

"If there aren’t now, there will be in a minute."

Nix laughed, and the sound lifted Dick's heart, same as he knew it would.


End file.
